


something better

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Hotels, M/M, Road Trips, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Eddie survives, and he and Richie decide to road-trip across America.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87
Collections: WIP Big Bang 2020





	something better

**Author's Note:**

> Finished for the "Finish Your Sh*t" WIP BB! 
> 
> I started this in September 2019, after [stolemyslumber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stolemyslumber) went to see this movie and said something to the effect of "Bill Hader is really good AND this movie is really gay," and I was already on the fence about seeing it because scary clown movie but omg James Ransone in an actual Hollywood movie with real movie stars like a real boy? (This is what ten years of Generation Kill fandom does to a person.) So I went, and afterward we were talking about fix-it possibilities that included "Eddie survives and they go on a road trip of Feelings", which morphed into talking about songs about driving, and what's why the title is from [The Wallflowers' One Headlight](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/wallflowers/oneheadlight.html).
> 
> Art!! by ideare: [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392357)
> 
> ***

Richie gets in the driver's seat of the Mustang and doesn't move for a minute, not even to put the key in the ignition. Eddie watches him stare at the steering wheel. "I don't think this is the sort of car that drives itself, dude," he says, because Richie just sitting there without moving is slightly concerning. 

"Maybe I should get one of those," Richie says finally, and starts the car. Then he looks at Eddie. "I don't even know where we're fucking going."

Eddie resettles himself carefully in the passenger seat. There's a large pharmacy bag between his feet, a bottle of prescription painkillers in easy reach, and thankfully the seatbelt doesn't cross his stitches. It's not so bad if he doesn't breathe too deeply, something he has plenty of experience at. "How about we drive on some roads that are well-paved and smooth, so I don't get jostled all over the fucking place."

Richie mutters something that's probably about Eddie's mom getting jostled, and puts the car in reverse. Eddie closes his eyes - the painkillers make him tired - and says, "Just like - go west."

"I can do that."

*

Technically, they have to go south before they can go west, but those are just details Eddie's fuzzy mind can't quite focus on at the moment. As Derry fades out in the rearview mirror, he sees a few tears rolling down Richie's face, and decides not to comment. For now. Instead he murmurs, "Did you notice how that place didn't seem to change at all, in twenty-seven years?"

"Like the rest of the world kept moving, but Derry didn't." Richie presses a little harder on the accelerator; they're on an interstate highway now, smooth pavement, a higher speed limit. "Yeah. Strange."

"Maybe it was…" Eddie's almost hesitant to say the name, but steels himself. "Pennywise."

"Or maybe it was just this place staying a backwards fucking hick town," Richie suggests, his voice sharpening on the final few words. He glances over his shoulder before changing lanes. Then he glances over at Eddie. "How long do you think you can go before the car gets too uncomfortable?"

Eddie shakes his head. "Don't know."

Richie picks his phone up out of the cupholder and thumbs at it for a second while Eddie stares at him. "What?"

"Do you know how many accidents are caused by people looking shit up on their phones while driving?"

"No, and I don't care," Richie replies, before very pointedly putting the phone in a mount on the dashboard. "Find me directions, asshole."

"We don't even know where we're going."

"This is a _spontaneous_ road trip."

Eddie doesn't remember the last time he did something spontaneous. Maybe deciding to pick up Thai for dinner instead of their normal Friday night pizza. He wonders when the last time Richie did anything with any spontaneity. He'd bet that's been a while, too. Without leaning forward too much, he manages to pull up a map with their road on it. "Didn't you say something about Reno? I'm going to put in Reno."

The app takes a while to calculate their route. Reno is forty-five hours away. 

"Fuck Reno," Richie says, but without any heat, sounding more like a reflex than anything else. 

Eddie grins at the dashboard. "Maybe we should do like, one state at a time," he says. It's three o'clock in the afternoon and Eddie has been out of the hospital for exactly ninety-seven minutes. "Let's see what I feel like in a couple hours."

"Awesome." 

Richie seems to relax slightly once they've put a dozen miles between them and the township limits, but he keeps looking over with a worried expression until Eddie can't take it anymore and snaps, "What? Am I bleeding all over?", while frowning at him.

"Just want to be sure you're all right."

"That's sweet."

Richie flushes a dull red. "Fine, I'll stop caring."

"Beep-beep, Richie," Eddie grumbles, and tries to hunch down in the seat, except that hurts and he sucks in a sharp breath that makes Richie give him another concerned look. Eddie straightens up carefully and tries to relax. It's a nice car, the seat is comfortable - which is good, because his ass is going to be spending a lot of hours in it.

"I don't feel like the same person I was a week ago," he says, by way of an apology. "Like, for real."

"Well, you did get stabbed."

"Fuckin' clowns."

"Fuckin' clowns," Richie echoes.

He turns the radio on after another few minutes, spinning the dial until he finds a station playing what Eddie thinks is the Stones. He turns his attention to the scenery rolling by, the late summer foliage still lush, and thinks about how different it looks than all the concrete and steel in New York City. He should call Myra and let her know he's alright, that he won't be home for a while, that someone else is doing the driving right now.

On second thought, he's not sure he even wants to go home. His old life feels like some sort of alternate universe, like that Eddie Kaspbrak doesn't exist anymore. Maybe he should call a divorce lawyer. And maybe a therapist. Maybe he can find someone who does both. 

"Richie," he says, over Mick Jagger singing about how he misses a woman improbably named Ruby Tuesday. 

"Yeah, man?"

"Don't you think we need some fucking therapy?"

Richie snorts and looks at him like he's crazy. "And say what to a shrink, exactly, Eds?"

"I don't know, something like how we lived in a town where some crazy fucking serial killer murdered a bunch of people and traumatized like half the population." That sounds close enough, actually. "For thirty years."

Richie starts to laugh, and laughs so long that Eddie starts wondering if they should pull over before Richie drives them into the back of another car. Then he manages to take a deep breath. "Yeah," he says, and wipes at his face, "yeah, that sounds about right for Derry."

*

The distance signs are starting to list towns across the border in Massachusetts before Eddie really starts feeling uncomfortable, even with half an Oxy - the recommended dosage, he'd been informed, and the pharmacy tech had split the tablets for him - and doing his best not to move. He must wince when the car goes over a particularly rough patch, and Richie must see it, because he turns the radio down a little and asks Eddie if he'd like a break.

"Could stretch my legs. And pee," Eddie replies.

Richie looks like he's about to call Eddie out on the obfuscation, but must think better of it, because he reaches out to tap an icon on the phone screen. "Hotel in about fifteen, that work?"

"Wherever is fine." As long as Eddie can lie down for a while without putting any pressure on the stitches. And probably change the bandage. The sharp edge of the Pennyspider's claw had caught him all down the right side, a long slice requiring more stitches than Eddie had ever gotten before in his life, but somehow not deep enough to knick anything important. 

"Landscaping accident," the Losers had apparently told the ER staff; Eddie doesn't remember getting to the hospital.

A little later, sitting next to Eddie's bed in the curtained-off cubicle, Richie said, "...and then the doctor said, 'Must be some yard'."

"He did not," Eddie muttered, bleary with whatever they'd put in his IV.

"I swear!"

"Quit making shit up." But he must have just sounded petulant, because Richie just chuckled and squeezed his hand. 

Eddie wonders now if they'd thought he was going to die, but he doesn't ask. Everyone else had come in to say goodbye once he was all stitched up but not allowed to leave yet - Mike on his way out of town for the first time in his life, aiming for the hurricane weather and retirees in Florida; Bill was going back to some semblance of his life in L.A.; and Beverly and Ben were going to Ben's place in Nebraska, probably holding hands the entire way. They'd all promised to keep in touch.

"Do you think we'll forget like last time?" Eddie asks Richie now, as they pass the sign announcing exits for Lawrence. 

"We've crossed the state line and I haven't forgotten shit," is Richie's reply. "I'd like to at least forget that fucking spider with Stan's head, if the universe is taking requests. 

"Me, too." The pain rises up a little higher in Eddie's chest and he tries to breathe through it. He watches the miles tick down on the GPS display.

*

"You look really pale, dude," Richie says, as they walk into the Holiday Inn Express. His hand is cupped loosely around Eddie's elbow like he thinks Eddie might fall over any second. Eddie really doesn't mind, even though he doesn't think he's at the falling-over point quite yet.

He sits on one of the lobby couches as Richie gets them a room, their luggage on the floor next to his feet. His own black suitcases look brand-new and impersonal next to Richie's beat-up duffel. 

"That's really what you use to go all over the country?" he asks, when Richie comes back with a pair of keycards.

"What? Oh, that. No, that's just what I grabbed for this particular trip down memory fucking lane." Richie pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Eddie knows he means to Derry, not their ill-advised, impromptu road trip, only three hours old. "I wasn't exactly thinking that clearly after Mike called."

"Me neither." Eddie's still looking at the bag. "It's a piece of shit."

"I appreciate you sharing that unasked-for opinion. Come on." He helps Eddie up by the elbow once more, then grabs all of their luggage. "I can't believe you needed to bring all of this in."

The room has two beds, and Eddie collapses carefully on the closest one. He feels Richie looking down at him, probably with concern. "I'm fine. Don't fucking hover."

"Uh-huh. You want one of those pills before I go find us something to eat?"

"Yeah, thanks."

Richie gets him a half a tablet and a glass of water from the tap, then must go fill up the ice bucket, because he's not gone long enough for Eddie to fall asleep before his hand is touching Eddie's shoulder, tentatively. "You'll be okay while I'm gone?"

_I'm not dying_ , Eddie wants to reply, but even halfway to stoned he knows it would be the wrong thing to say. "Got my phone right here, I can call if something gets weird."

"Okay."

The door shuts with a quiet click, and Eddie is left alone in the quiet, dim room, focusing on breathing carefully enough until the painkiller kicks in and sends him descending into sleep.

*

He's not sure how long he's been out when he wakes up again, but the room smells like food - french fries, maybe? - and when he gets his sticky eyelids open, he sees Richie on the other bed, eating something out of a takeout container.

"How long was I asleep?" he asks, and his voice sounds scratchy and dry to his own ears. 

"Only about an hour. I got you a chicken thing on a gluten-free wrap if you want it." Richie points at another styrofoam container, sitting at the edge of Eddie's bed with a small pile of napkins next to it.

"Thanks." He sits up carefully. Food is definitely a good idea; his stomach is growling. Eddie realizes he hasn't put anything in it but prescription pain medication in nearly an entire day.

Richie turns on the TV like he'd been waiting for Eddie to wake up before he did. The hotel information channel comes into focus, displaying the forecast. He hears Richie mutter, "Great, rain."

The wrap is still warm, and tastes amazing, clearly a side effect of being so hungry since normally a slice of tomato this pale would just make Eddie sad. The fries aren't very crisp anymore, but he eats them all anyway, then eats the rest of Richie's when he offers them. 

"I should go change my bandage," he says, when the food is gone and he's finished what was left of the glass of water. 

"Yell if you need help," Richie replies. 

Eddie gets slowly out of the bed and picks up the plastic pharmacy bag, then goes into the bathroom. There's a generous amount of counter space, so he sets everything out in the order he'll need it before unbuttoning the shirt he's wearing. It's actually Richie's, wordlessly handed over to the nurse when she said Eddie probably shouldn't be pulling anything up and over his head for a few days. 

He wonders what the ER staff thought of Richie.

Carefully, he peels off the tape and gauze. Then he looks at himself in the mirror. It's not as bloody as he thought it would be. The angry red slash stands out sharply against his pale skin, with the criss-crossed black stitches lined up neatly along it. He'll have to get them out in a few days. If they stop in major cities, there should be a walk-in clinic where he can hand over the orders from the attending in Derry. 

A soft knock on the door. "You didn't fall into the toilet or anything, right?" Richie says.

"Fuck off, Rich."

"Just checking."

Eddie is one strip of tape into putting the new bandage on when he realizes it's definitely a two person job. He opens the door. "Yo, bro, I need a hand."

"You're in luck, I have two of those." Richie looks down at Eddie's meticulously arranged supplies. "Wow, did you even measure the pieces of tape?"

Eddie flips him off. "Please just help me and don't speak."

Richie returns the gesture, but is careful about lining up the tape neatly to the edge of the gauze pad, smoothing it down with not too much pressure. The pristine white rectangle angles up and around Eddie's ribs, right where he's a little ticklish, but he just holds his breath and manages not to twitch. 

"That okay?" Richie asks when he's done. 

"Yeah, thanks." Eddie buttons up the shirt. "Uh, thanks for letting me borrow this, too."

Richie just waves it off, and looks around the bathroom like he's realized they're standing together in a fairly small space. He's close enough that Eddie can feel his body heat. "Rich," he starts to say, but Richie says, "whatever you want to know, not now," and backs out of the room. A few seconds later, the volume from the television increases. 

Eddie makes sure all of his trash is in the bin, then carefully splashes some water on his face before he walks back into the main room. Richie's got on something that looks like a reality show, but Eddie doesn't recognize it. He gets back into the bed, on his unbandaged side, and watches until his eyelids feel so heavy he can't hold them open anymore. He thinks the volume might go back down, because he's pretty sure he hears Richie whisper "night, Eds," before he sinks into a dreamless sleep.

*

Eddie wakes up to a large square of sunlight falling directly across his face. "Close the curtains, Myra," he mutters into the pillow, before remembering with a painful start that he's in a Massachusetts hotel with Richie Tozier, with a giant pad of gauze taped over his ribs, and a dead supernatural clown twenty-four hours behind them.

Richie's still asleep, only his messed-up hair visible above the white hotel sheet that he's clutching tight around his head and shoulders. Eddie can't look away for a full minute, wondering why Richie's pulled the sheet so closely around himself. It's not cold enough for that.

Eddie gets out of the bed then, needing water, and chases half a painkiller with a full glass. He'd like to shower, but he can't yet, so he settles for feeling vaguely grumpy about it while he brushes his teeth and washes his face with the arm he can actually lift. He checks his bandage to find it perfectly in place, no blood visible through the gauze.

There are rustling sounds from the other room, so Richie must be awake, and when Eddie leaves the bathroom he sees Richie rummaging through his beat-up bag. "You forget something, man?" he asks.

"I seem to be running out of clothes," Richie mutters, still groping around his bag as though more of whatever clothes he's run out of will magically appear, all while frowning. "I didn't pack for more than a couple days."

Eddie's been wearing the same shirt for approximately twenty-two hours now, since he needs buttons. "You can borrow some of my shit until we can do some laundry."

"We are not the same size."

"Fuck off." Eddie unzips one of his suitcases and finds a shirt that's baggy on him, and whips it at Richie's head with his good arm. Then he has to sit down on the bed and not move for a minute or two. It's nearly ten in the morning; they'd both slept for almost twelve hours. _Makes sense_ , Eddie figures to himself. _Fighting killer clowns and all that shit._

He sees Richie's gaze on him. "I'm fine," he says shortly. "Get dressed, man, I'm starving. Go on, fucking hurry it up."

"I need coffee," Richie says as though it's only just occurred to him, and takes his bag and Eddie's shirt, stumbling into the bathroom.

*

There's a diner less than half a mile from the hotel, and a grocery store next to it. "Store first," Richie says, already walking towards it. "You don't have to come with me but I need like, ibuprofen and a bottle of bourbon and I don't know, cigarettes."

"I can walk around a store. And no. You're not getting any fucking cigarettes." 

He looks at Richie, feeling like he's almost daring him to argue, but Richie just makes an annoyed face and says, "Fine, but I'm still getting the bourbon." 

He slows his steps so Eddie can catch up, and they walk the short distance of sidewalk without speaking. The supermarket is bright and cool and Eddie feels grimy and unwashed within three seconds of stepping inside. Maybe the next hotel, he'll tape a plastic bag over the bandage and try to shower. 

Richie grabs a basket and marches off, Eddie figures toward the liquor department. He bags a couple apples instead of following: he needs fruit, and if he has to toss the cores out the window of the Mustang later, well, they're biodegradable. 

It's a little easier to breathe today - the uninterrupted sleep probably helped. The actual nightmare of defeating It seems a little less real, but Eddie's not sure if that means the memory itself is growing hazy already, or if the florescent lights of the supermarket are tricking his brain into thinking the dim sewers under Neibolt street were just a horrible dream. 

The bandage on his side is real, though. Eddie puts a hand gently over it to be sure. Then he grabs a bag of potato chips off the display he's walking past. 

He finds Richie in the liquor department, a bottle of Advil already in his basket. "You could have asked for some of mine, I brought a whole bottle with me," Eddie says.

"What, this?" Richie rattles it. "That's okay, not like I won't use it. Jesus, how much did you pack?"

"It's called being prepared." Eddie reaches out and plucks at the collar of Richie's borrowed shirt, visible above the zipper of his hoodie. "Which clearly you were not, Richie."

Richie points at him. "Uh, pot, kettle?"

"I am only wearing your shirt because I got _stabbed_."

Richie rolls his eyes and Eddie expects him to say something sarcastic next. Not what he does say. Which is, "Don't remind me," muttered nearly under his breath as he turns back to the shelves in front of them.

Without thinking about it, Eddie asks, "Would you have been sad if I'd died?"

Richie's head whips around and he stares at Eddie with wide eyes, the bottle he'd been reaching for rattling against its neighbors. "What the fuck kind of question is that?"

Eddie flinches. "Sorry, man," he whispers. 

" _Of course_ I - what the - Christ." Richie snatches a bottle of bourbon from the middle shelf and starts walking towards the registers, quick for a few steps before he slows and sighs, letting Eddie catch up. 

Eddie gropes for something to say and settles on, "I got us some chips for the drive," as he holds up the bag.

*

The map shows increasing amounts of traffic as they approach Albany proper, and Eddie sees Richie scowl at the phone screen. "You know, I hate driving," he says, in a conversational tone but still scowling.

"Dude - why - shouldn't you have mentioned that earlier? Like, _before_ we spontaneously decided to drive across the entire fucking United States of goddamn America?" Eddie flings his hands in the air, baffled. God, Richie is so infuriatingly weird sometimes. ( _Sometimes_ , like they haven't only just begun to get to know each other again, like they've stayed friends the last twenty-seven years.)

"It's been okay! This is not okay." Richie taps the phone and it zooms in on something random. "Shit."

Eddie zooms it back out, says, "Well, I'm not supposed to drive until I get my stitches out, so you've got at least four more days."

"It's fine. But we're going around that fucking mess and finding food somewhere less full of cars and people and shit."

"Fine."

*

The farmstand and restaurant Richie pulls into looks so quaint that they both stare at it through the windshield. "It's like something out of a movie where people make fun of the farm hicks. Like, 'Jebediah, fetch that there tractor!'," Richie mutters.

"County Fuckin' Bumpkins, coming soon to a theater near you," Eddie deadpans, and finds himself flushing with pleasure when Richie laughs at his words.

Which makes Richie's immediately guarded expression when Eddie says, "Can I ask you something, dude?" all the more disappointing.

"No, you can't fuck my mom."

"I'm being serious, Rich."

"Uh-huh." Richie yanks open the restaurant door. 

A waitress in a gingham apron shows them to a table and says she'll take their drink order. "I don't suppose this place has a full bar," Richie says to her.

"Rich, it's two in the fu- in the afternoon," Eddie whispers.

"I'll have an iced tea, thank you." When the waitress is gone, Richie slumps in the chair and drums his fingers on the tabletop. "All right, what is it you want to know?"

"What you said about not writing your own material, you weren't kidding, right?"

"Nah, it's basically true." Richie shakes the rolled-up fabric napkin out into his lap, then shrugs. "I come up with some basic ideas, topics, that sort of shit, but I got a bunch of ghostwriters that write the whole act."

"Why?" Eddie asks, honestly wanting to know.

"Stand-up is basically taking your own life and giving it a punchline, right?" Richie gives him a fake-looking smile. "Well."

"Oh," Eddie breathes, as he gets it, suddenly. "Yeah, okay, dude. I'd probably get a ghostwriter, too."

Richie thanks the waitress as she brings their drinks, then adds, "I'm not the only one who does it."

"Okay, that's like finding out wrestling isn't real."

"You don't watch fucking wrestling," Richie says, waving his hand as if to dismiss the thought completely. The movement is almost endearing, and Eddie thinks, _Okay, maybe we haven't remembered each other for twenty-seven years, but he's still my best friend_.

*

They poke through the little store once they're done eating. It's mostly fresh produce and gifts that Eddie labels as both kitschy and tacky in equal measure. He gets another few apples, then finds Richie standing in front of a stationary display, frowning.

"I'd punch you but my wound hurts," Eddie tells him truthfully.

"Take an Oxy." Richie grabs a small notebook off the shelf.

"You gonna write some jokes?"

"No, a memoir. Fuck off."

Once they've paid and gotten back in the Mustang, Richie looks at him and asks, "Did you ever realize how often we tell each other to go fuck ourselves?"

"I think it's just how our friendship works," Eddie replies, after giving it a moment's thought. 

Richie snorts at that and puts the car in reverse. Eddie takes another half a painkiller.

"If you wrote a memoir, I would read it," he tells Richie once they're back on the highway, starting to feel just a little woozy, apples rolling around the bag at his feet. The landscape here is all green trees rippling in the wind along the sides of the road, and Eddie thinks again to himself that it's a far cry from the silver-windowed skyscrapers that normally border the roads he drives on. 

"Only because it'd take about five minutes to get through, given all the gaps in our memories."

"You just make 'em a blank chapter. Like Twilight."

Richie laughs so hard Eddie is again concerned for his driving. "You read that garbage?"

"Bet your ass I did. Terrible novels are the best bedtime reading. Who wants to read shit they have to think about right before going to sleep? Then you just stay awake worrying about quantum physics or whatever bullshit."

Richie's nearly wheezing now. "Please, Eds, write that down for me. I need it for my next act. Please."

"Fuck the fuck off."

*

"You know what, I should have brought my Xbox," Richie says, as he sits on the end of his bed in their Syracuse motel room.

"And stuffed that in your shitty overnight bag, too?"

Richie flips him off, still frowning at the snow on the television screen. The only channels it seems to get are the hotel information screen, the Weather Channel, and one local access channel that is currently airing a show where a pudgy teenager sits behind a desk and reads a book about tabletop gaming on-air.

"You're not into the D&D?" Eddie adds. He's organizing his suitcases, keeping the worn/not worn clothes separate, trying to judge if he needs to buy underwear or find a laundromat. After a while, he realizes Richie hasn't replied, and looks up to see him watching. "What, man?"

"How many times are you going to refold those shirts?"

"I like things neat."

Richie's now wearing a dubious expression. "You want to get drunk? Maybe the Dungeon master here is more palatable with a glass of bourbon in you." He leans over the other side of the bed, and Eddie hears the rustle of the grocery bag before Richie sits up with the bottle in hand. 

Eddie hasn't felt bad enough to take an Oxy since lunch, so it's been more than four hours and he wouldn't be mixing. Richie swings the bottle a little and adds, "You're not doped up right now, man, you can have a sip or two."

"You noticed."

Richie rolls his eyes before getting up to grab the hotel glasses on the dresser. "Yeah, I noticed. Here."

"I'm not done, chill." Eddie refolds the last of his unworn shirts; hopefully tomorrow he can get one of these polos over his head and not have to borrow something else from Richie, who probably doesn't have anything left to wear anyway. "You want to stop somewhere tomorrow and wash some stuff? Or buy?"

"Yeah, probably." Richie presses one of the glasses into Eddie's hand. He's changed out of his jeans and Eddie's shirt into his pajamas, which is just boxers and an undershirt that's too short for his tall frame, but he doesn't seem to care about slouching around their hotel rooms in it. He flops back onto his bed and the shirt rides up, and Eddie watches him tug it back down absentmindedly. "Still should have brought the Xbox," Richie grumbles, and tips half the contents of his glass into his mouth.

Eddie takes a much smaller sip to start out, then sits on his own bed. "Maybe the dragons man is done now."

"We can hope." Richie aims the remote. 

The public access channel is now playing an old episode of Lawrence Welk. "God, uugh," Richie groans. "I used to watch this with my grandma."

"I remember that."

Richie looks over with his glass stopped nearly to his mouth. "Really?" 

"She used to bake us those cookies, dude. The ones I couldn't tell my mom I ate or else she'd flip the fuck out about whatever was in them." That part is still a little fuzzy. "It's so fucking weird not remembering some of that shit."

"Your wife never asked you any questions about your childhood?"

Eddie takes another small swallow of the bourbon. "You know, sometimes I just made shit up. Not outrageous or anything, but I'd just say whatever seemed to fit best with what life was like after my mom and I moved away from Derry. We were only like thirteen, do most people have really specific memories from that age? Or do we just have… sort of vague impressions." 

He shrugs, then rearranges the pillow behind his back. 

Richie frowns down into his drink. "What are you going to do when you go home? Like, I figure you'll fly back to the city from Reno."

"I don't know, dude." Eddie tips his head back against the headboard. "I don't even know if I can go home."

Not _want_. Not _will_. 

If he _can_ go home.

"I don't know how any of us can go back to what we were before we killed the fucking clown motherfucker, is all," he adds, more to himself than to Rich. 

"I… don't see any way to disagree with that, actually." Richie tips what's left in his glass down his throat, and climbs off the bed for more. "But we've still got like, a whole fucking week to figure that shit out. You want more?"

"Yeah, why the fuck not?" Eddie holds out his glass. "Cheers, I guess."

"Cheers to being alive, man."

*

Eddie wakes up the next morning to blood on the sheets. "Oh, shit, oh fuck," he gasps, struggling away from the spot, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest. It's on the fitted sheet, it's on the top sheet, it's on his undershirt, just barely tugged over his head the night before with Richie's help.

"Eddie? Eddie!" Richie comes into his field of vision, grabs Eddie's hands, then his shoulders. "Stop. Stop thrashing."

"Blood," Eddie wheezes. 

He feels Richie cup his cheek, hears him say, "Sssh, calm down, it's not a lot. Just a few drops." 

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut tight. "Blood."

"I'm putting my glasses on. Okay. Let me look." 

Warm hands slide the undershirt up carefully. "Lift your elbows more, Eds," Richie murmurs. Eddie does. "There you go. Okay, I'm looking now, and - don't freak out, stop freaking out."

"I'm not freaking out, fucker."

"You are." Richie squeezes his shoulder. "You popped a stitch. Looks like just one, okay? So this blood is probably from you turning over a couple times last night, you know, like it seeped through real slow. You're not still, like, actively bleeding, man."

Eddie takes a breath so deep his chest hurts. He makes himself ask as calmly as possible, "Does it look bad enough that I should find someplace to get it stitched up again?", sagging a little against Richie as he does.

"No, it's kinda scabbed over now. There's butterfly bandages in your first aid kid, I could put one of those on there for you."

"Okay."

"Come on into the bathroom."

In the bright light of the hotel bathroom, with cold tile under his bare feet, Eddie feels more awake and slightly less freaked out. "I was having a fucking nightmare," he says, staring down at the floor while Richie digs through one of the bags on the counter. "People - people were bleeding in it. And then I woke up and…"

A gentle hand on his shoulder. "You're okay," Richie murmurs, then clears his throat. "All right, lift your arm up a little." 

He keeps talking while he presses a warm, damp washcloth to Eddie's side and holds it there - mostly about how he'd looked up the route to Cleveland they're taking today, and how it should take about five hours in actual travel time, and how they'll have to find someplace interesting to stop. 

Eddie lets Richie's voice wash over him, distracting him from the anxiety that threatens to rise up past his stomach and high into his chest. Richie doesn't stop talking as he dabs a touch of antibiotic gel on the spot, or as he gets a bandage open. Eddie feels the slight pinch of the adhesive as Richie gets it in place. "...you're good, Eds. All done."

"Thank you. You think there's really anywhere cool to stop between here and Cleveland?"

Richie shoves his glasses back up his nose. "Dunno, Buffalo?"

"Buffalo ain't shit."

"When did you go to Buffalo?" 

"Myra and I went to Niagara Falls for her birthday one year, and you have to drive through Buffalo to get there." Eddie curls his toes against the tile. "I guess Niagara Falls wasn't as impressive in person, either."

"Neither are you, man."

"Get fucked, Rich." 

Richie tugs Eddie's undershirt down where it's been bunched up in his armpit, readjusts his glasses, and says, "I think there's one of those continental breakfast things in this place. Maybe they've got those little danish with the fruit," as he walks out of the bathroom. 

"I'm _allergic_ to _gluten_ ," Eddie yells after him.

*

Mike calls when they've been on the road about an hour. Eddie sees his name on the display and reaches out to accept the call. "Hey, Mikey. It's, uh. It's Eddie talking, since Richie's driving."

"Hey, guys, hey. Greetings, from sunny, sunny… Richmond, Virginia."

Eddie grins. "Only so many hours in the day, right?"

"I can drive about nine, and then I just - can't," Mike laughs. He sounds much more relaxed than he had in Derry. "But it's nice, just having the windows down, watching the towns go by. Looking at the view."

"I'm sorry," Richie says, and when Eddie looks at him, his expression is serious. "I'm sorry you had to be the one to stay there. To remember."

"Hey, we were kids," Mike says, softer. "You couldn't stop your parents from wanting to move away. You couldn't stop the forgetting. That's just - how it all worked out."

"Doesn't mean I'm not sorry, man." 

Eddie reaches over without thinking about it and rests his hand on the bend of Richie's elbow. Richie glances down, but doesn't comment on it. 

Eddie clears his throat. "I'm guessing we're not the only ones who still remember this time?"

"No, it's all of us. Maybe it's because we're not kids anymore. Maybe because we finally killed It for good. I can't say for sure. But I wanted to see how you guys were. Plus it's a little bit lonely driving fifteen hundred miles by myself."

"We're doing three thousand. We win," Richie says, and Mike laughs at that, rich and warm. "And I might as well be alone, Eddie here falls asleep all the time stoned on Oxy and then complains about his wounds the rest."

"Fuck off, man," Eddie says, pushing lightly at Richie's arm. Mike's still laughing and the expression on Richie's face tells him that he doesn't mean any of what he just said. _I like him_ , Eddie thinks, tightening his grip on Richie just a little. _I'm glad we're doing this. Together._

He remembers now one of those things that had faded: watching out the back of the station wagon as he and his mom headed out of Derry, Richie standing in the street, waving so slowly that it was like his hand was just raised in the air, barely moving. The sunlight reflecting oddly off the lenses of his glasses, so Eddie couldn't really see his face. "Why do we have to move, Mommy?" he asked.

"We just do, Eddie. It's time."

Eddie watched out the back window as Richie grew smaller, and smaller, and then disappeared. After that, Eddie forgot he'd had a best friend in Derry, forgot they'd fought some sort of demon together, forgot how he'd gotten the fracture that doctors commented on whenever he'd gotten an x-ray. When he asked his mom, she said he fell off his bike, and that seemed like a good enough explanation. 

Mike tells them about the first few days of his trip, then says he's been calling everyone just to check up. "Were we last on your list?" Richie asks, glancing over his shoulder out the back window of the Mustang before changing lanes. 

"Someone had to be, and I knew you guys were driving."

"How's everyone else?"

"Good, good," Mike says, and fills them in on what the rest of the Losers are up to. Bill's been writing, apparently several chapters into something that he for once knows the perfect ending for, and Bev and Ben are soaking up the sun on Ben's boat, having bypassed Nebraska and gone straight to the apartment Ben keeps next to the marina in San Jose. 

"Sounds like everyone's headed west but you, man," Eddie says to Mike.

"It's all right. You know anywhere is better than Derry."

Eddie can't help but laugh at that, even as it hurts, both his side and his heart. He glances over at Richie, and sees that Richie looks about the same as Eddie feels. "Yeah, Mikey, you said it."

*

"That is the ugliest shirt I've ever seen," Eddie says, arms folded carefully over his chest as he stands in the middle of the men's clothing department in this middle of nowhere Wal-Mart, watching Richie make faces at shirt selections. "So clearly, you should get several."

"Who's the one that can't lift his arm above his head? That's right, it's you. I didn't bring enough clothes to outfit two people."

"Well, why not?" Eddie deadpans, and Richie smothers a laugh in his palm before continuing to slide the metal hangers along the rack. They make a quiet screeching noise. It's just past one in the afternoon, and there's no one else even within earshot. Eddie packed enough for two weeks, so he's technically not even close to running out of clean clothes, but he's also wearing Richie's last clean button-down. It's a little easier to move his arm today; he thinks tomorrow he might be able to wear his own polos again. 

"So I looked at the map last night," Richie says, grabbing a couple shirts off the rack. "And if your stitches are supposed to come out in a few days, I think we should be in Omaha by then, and Omaha should have a decent walk-in clinic we can stop at." 

Eddie had a glass and a half of bourbon last night, definitely not enough to knock him on his ass, but he does not remember Richie looking at his phone at all before they'd turned off the light to sleep. "When did you plot more roadtrip?"

"Probably two in the morning." Richie thumbs through a stack of jeans. "Couldn't sleep."

"Nightmares?"

Richie nods, looking a little paler, and tugs one of the pairs from the pile. 

"You could have woken me up, dude," Eddie says, feeling both a little annoyed that Richie hadn't and sad that he'd probably sat there in the dark, quietly trying to shake off the dream. 

"It's all right." 

_It's not all right_ , Eddie wants to say, because they have gone through some serious trauma this week, _psychological_ trauma, the sort that really fucks up people's brains. He'd read up on it a little once - reminded while he was working on a disaster policy for a school district that there were things he couldn't quite remember about his childhood, and he'd found that there was actual x-ray proof that things changed, on a structural level, in people's brains when they were traumatized. Maybe that was part of why they'd all lost their memories after moving out of Derry as kids. He'd never really had the chance to think about it so specifically before now.

"Gonna go try this shit on," Richie says, waving the clothes he's holding and distracting Eddie from his musings. He heads for the changing room.

Eddie browses through a couple more racks while Richie's gone, not really seeing what he's looking at. He winds up staring at the same sort of short-sleeved shirts he'd borrowed from Richie, in even uglier patterns. "Hey man, you getting some of those?" Richie asks, coming up next to him, a haphazard bundle under his arm. 

"No. Or well, not for me. You want I should replace what I borrowed?"

"What? No, no." 

"So what comes after Omaha?" Eddie asks, as they walk in the direction of the registers. "I don't think I've ever been to Nebraska."

"It's a lot of wide open spaces. I did a couple nights in Omaha, last year or the year before. After being in L.A. for a few months before that, it was almost too quiet. Think I had to drink myself to sleep."

"Do you do that often?"

It's Richie's turn at the register then, and he doesn't answer. 

Back in the car, Eddie asks the question again, and watches Richie's face scrunch up before he shrugs. "Is 'sometimes' an answer? Sometimes I can't sleep otherwise."

"You can get a prescription for that," Eddie replies; he has definitely filled one or more of those himself. 

"Then I'm just groggy the next day."

"As opposed to hungover?"

Richie outright laughs at that. "Yeah, man, as opposed to hungover." He turns the car out of the parking lot, then onto the street that Eddie remembers will take them west to the highway on-ramp. 

Richie spends most of the next stretch telling Eddie how he went from telling jokes - terrible, lacking a punchline half the time jokes - in a shitty bar to telling jokes in an actual competition, to _winning_ the competition and booking paid shows. "I was so bad at first, man. I made up shit on the spot and none of it made sense. I was like that sweaty nervous dude in that one Ocean's movie, where he wanted to be a comedian and thought the matador costume would help."

"You wore a matador costume?"

"No, I didn't wear a matador costume." Richie makes a face, and Eddie grins.

*

"I don't even remember why I wanted to go to Reno," Richie says, as they eat breakfast at a diner outside Cleveland. He's paused with his fork halfway through taking a corner from his french toast.

"It was an arbitrary point. I think."

"I guess." Richie sticks the bite of french toast in his mouth, looking at nothing as he chews. 

"You already figured out the route," Eddie adds. 

"We could drive there and then keep going."

"What, like, keep going into California?" He pictures the map in his head, a straight line west from Reno. "Yeah, I guess."

"You got enough clothes?" Richie slurps at his orange juice, then frowns at the glass as though it's offended him. 

Eddie actually does have enough that they could drive for another week. He cuts his sausage link into fourths. "Yes. Do you?" 

"No. You're not tired of motel rooms yet?"

"No." He shakes his head. "Wait, are you?"

"I haven't gotten tired of them so far." Richie leans back against the padded booth, and puts his feet up on the bench next to Eddie almost like he's daring Eddie to complain. Eddie rolls his eyes and eats more of his breakfast instead. 

In the car, Richie spends a minute zooming in on various places on the map before he plugs his phone in and puts it in the mount. "I figure we'll stop somewhere in Indiana for lunch, that's about three hours - a good middle point. Joliet should be another two, two and a half hours after that."

"Sounds good."

"You can be in charge of the radio this leg."

Eddie spins the dial for a while once they're on the highway. Today's pop is too bright, or maybe too upbeat, for his liking. "Don't you got Sirius XM or whatever in this car?"

Richie scoffs. "Who wants to pay for that? They still have commercials and shit."

Eddie stops on something that sounds fairly eighties and settles back against the seat. He sees Richie glance over. "Before you ask, I'm fine. Itchy, but fine. I can't wait to take an actual fucking shower."

"We'll buy you a sponge, next stop."

Eddie makes a disgusted noise in reply. "The washcloth method sucks, dude."

"Sorry, man." Richie does at least sound like he's somewhat sorry about Eddie not being able to use a shower yet. 

Ohio rolls by, concrete and asphalt of the turnpike bordered by trees and farmland. They spent a few miles behind a van so covered in bumper stickers that the paint job is barely visible, reading off the ones that are legible. "I think that's actually a Perot '96 sticker," Eddie says, squinting through the windshield. "Dude, this van is probably held together by all those fucking stickers. Like if you sent it through a carwash it would melt."

"I don't think it's been through a carwash since '96." Richie changes lanes. "And that rust hole is the size of a dinner plate." 

"Maybe it was Perot '92." 

They pass the van, which by Eddie's estimation probably should not be driving on any highways, if indeed any streets at all. "Don't look, don't look, don't look," he hears Richie chanting under his breath. 

"I can't not look," Eddie whispers back. 

He looks. The guy behind the wheel looks as old as time itself, a hippie leftover, with long grey hair and what looks like a leather vest over a plaid shirt. From what Eddie can see, at least. "Perot '92," he hears Richie say. 

Eddie looks back at the pavement in front of them and blinks a few times. "Road trip bingo: Old dude in old van, check."

"What else is there in road trip bingo?"

"Um… shitty coffee, super sketchy gas station…" He trails off, thinking.

"At least one terrible hotel."

"Think we crossed that one off back in Derry, dude."

Richie bobs his head. "When you're right, Eds, you're right. Let's see. Wait, did you ever read that book Bill wrote about the haunted murder highway?"

"Haunted. Murder. Highway," Eddie repeats back at him, flat.

"Yeah, man. I read it on a plane once. It was pretty good, even if it went a little off the rails trying to explain how the route ended up playing host to a bunch of vengeful ghosts."

"Did they all get murdered by some serial killer?"

"Of course. _And_ , and - the truck stop where a bunch of it was set was built on an Indian burial ground."

"Jesus, Bill," Eddie laughs, rolling his eyes. 

They pass an entire caravan of semis, then have to switch lanes to go past one that's pulled over. "I don't think I could do that," Eddie says, looking at the driver putting out cones as they roll by. "Drive for days like that, have to sleep in that little bunk they've got while the truck is parked behind some rest stop. And have to shower _in_ the rest stop. Do you know how gross that is?"

"Yes, actually. When I first started, doing shitty little clubs all over, sometimes I couldn't afford whatever the local motel rate was. So I did make use of the facilities at rest stops a few times. And they were usually pretty sketchy, but I was twenty-three and fucking stupid." Richie shrugs a shoulder, then opens a bottle of water one-handed to take a sip. "Don't tell me you never did stupid shit in your youth."

Eddie's not sure twenty-three really counts as _youth_. "At that age, I was a junior analyst at an insurance company in Bangor, and my apartment had an excellent shower."

He thinks longingly of the shower for a moment. It was probably the best shower he's ever experienced. Then he notices Richie is giving him a weird look. "What, man?"

"I was a fucking idiot when I was twenty-three," Richie says quietly. He glances out the window, then changes lanes, sliding around another train of semis. "So I guess I'm always amazed when anyone else has their life together at that age."

Eddie remembers with perfect clarity the panic attacks he had at least once a month in his early twenties. "I faked it."

"You faked it?"

"Fuck, yeah. I got up every morning and I went to work, I did my job while being terrified I'd get fired for not knowing what I was doing. And when work was over I'd go home - Myra usually got back before me. She worked in the registrar's office at the University; we met in an English class there, my junior year." 

He fiddles with the seatbelt for a moment. "I don't know, man. Maybe everything between leaving Derry and going back to Derry was just faking it."

"Eds," Richie says, soft. Slowly, he inches his hand over, across the gearshift. Eddie slides his fingers between Richie's and squeezes, then watches out the window as Ohio slides into Indiana.

*

The motel outside Joliet is such that Eddie can only stand next to the car and stare at it for a full minute. The roof looks about a week from completely caving in, if that, and half the lights outside the doors are burned out.

"This looks like the sort of place where we don't even get free HBO," he says to Richie. 

"No, I think there's HBO," Richie replies, nudging his glasses up, "but no internet, and no room service. Although the weird kid at the office says the pizza at that place over there -" he points across the street, "is out of this world."

"You think they got a gluten-free crust?"

"These days, they might." Richie dangles a key, then unlocks one of the anonymous doors. Then he stops in the doorway. "Well. Okay."

"What?" Eddie goes up on his tiptoes to see fully over Richie's shoulder. The room looks clean - spotless, even - and smells clean. Then he sees that there's only one bed. 

"No wonder it was cheap," Richie sighs. 

"It's fine," Eddie says before he can even think about it. "I'm sure we had some sleepovers as kids. You probably came to my house, since my mom wouldn't let me stay over at anyone else's because of my allergies and what if someone tried to offer me a sandwich or whatever on white bread. Even though I'm pretty sure I ate white bread like that at Bill's house at least once, or maybe more like five times, and didn't die or go into anaphylactic shock or whatever -"

"Eds," Richie says, and Eddie stops talking. Then Riche looks at him with a clearly confused expression. "Wait, does that mean you can eat regular pizza crust after all?"

"We can share the bed, it's cool." Eddie pushes Richie into the room. "Not sure about the pizza."

"Huh." Richie puts his bag down on the far side of the bed, then unzips it. He takes a little square pouch out of it, then a little screwdriver out of the pouch, then takes off his glasses and sits down on the edge of the bed. Eddie watches him squint at the tiny screwdriver for a second.

"Uh, could you?" Richie asks, holding it all out in his direction. "Hard to fix your own glasses when you're halfway to blind without them."

"Sure." 

"The -" Richie gestures at one side of his head. "Left side is loose."

Eddie tightens the miniscule screw carefully, then slides the glasses back onto Richie's face. "There. Better?"

"Thanks, dude. Pizza?"

"Pizza." 

They each get their own, just in case, and the gluten-free crust is admittedly really good for being made in what's basically a shack in southern Illinois. "You ever been to Illinois before?" he asks Richie between bites.

"Chicago, yeah." Richie glances around the small space; they'd decided to just sit in the restaurant to eat, and then maybe walk up and down the street a few times to shake off the stiffness from the drive. Eddie's pretty sure he can handle walking a few thousand steps even if his side feels a little sore today - probably from all the sitting. 

"I think Chicago almost counts as its own state, compared to this," Richie adds, almost whispering it. 

Eddie has been to Chicago exactly once. He nods in agreement, then watches Richie shake parmesan cheese from a little jar onto his pepperoni, frown at it, then blot a little of the oil with the corner of a whisper-thin paper napkin. 

In the space of fifteen seconds, Eddie has an entire slow-motion daydream (evening-dream? fantasy?) about living his entire life in a place like this, on the edge of a large city but not actually in it, working at one of those smaller insurance places where you actually learn client names, and you eat lunch with your co-workers in what everyone refers to affectionately as "the break room" instead of at your desk, and at the end of the work day you go home to an actual hobby that you have time for instead of being stuck in traffic for at least an hour, and it's not Myra in the backyard of the actual house you own here, but Richie, on a lawn chair, frowning at the notepad he'd scribbling on, ideas for a podcast -

"You dudes good over there?" the guy behind the counter yells. He's wearing a backwards baseball cap over a hairnet. "Pizza all right?"

"It's great, man, can you ring us up another two beers?" Richie calls back. To Eddie he says, "It's Friday, isn't it?"

_Podcast._ "Yes, Friday," Eddie manages, although it takes his brain a second to catch up. "You're trying to say it's cool we get wasted because it's the weekend."

"Time has no meaning," Richie deadpans. 

Eddie eats another square of his pizza before the kid brings them each another bottle. "Tomorrow I need to eat a vegetable. Or two or five." 

"Remember the salad bar at... shit, I can't remember the name of the restaurant." Richie slumps back in his chair, beer in hand. "One of those places our parents must have taken us when we were kids."

"Your parents, maybe."

"The salad bar was never actual salad. It was like, macaroni salad, and thawed out frozen peas. _Maybe_ there was some iceberg lettuce." He looks down at his pizza strangely for a second, then pulls several napkins from the dispenser and a pen from his pocket. Eddie watches him try to scratch something out. The tip of the pen goes right through the napkin. "Fuck!"

Eddie's still got the grocery store receipt in his jacket pocket. "Uh, here." 

"Thanks." 

He watches, fascinated, as Richie writes in tiny letters while also eating two more pieces of pizza with his free hand, then drinking half the bottle of beer in one go. The expression on his face when he puts the pen down is unlike any Eddie has seen cross his features so far. And they fought a monster; he's seen a hell of a lot of expressions run across Richie's face. 

"Um," Richie says. He looks down at what he wrote, then back up at Eddie. "Fuck. I don't remember the last time I actually wrote something."

"It's good, though. That you're writing. Your own stuff, I mean." Eddie takes a drink of his own beer. "Can I read it?"

Richie draws the slip of paper protectively close. "Or not," Eddie adds, trying not to feel disappointed. 

"Later, maybe." Richie nods at his own words. He folds up the receipt and tucks it in his pocket. 

"Sure." 

The evening has cooled dramatically by the time they settle up and head out the door. "Walk for a bit?" Richie asks, nodding up the slight incline that the sidewalk follows up away from their motel. 

"Sounds good. I could do with some fresh air after all that grease. Just go slow so I don't pull anything."

They walk northwards up the street for what Eddie figures is maybe half a mile, at a leisurely pace, not talking. Richie looks like he's caught up in thinking about something, so Eddie figures he'll just walk, and let Richie think about whatever it is he's thinking about. 

At what seems to be the crest of the slight hill, Richie puts his hands on his hips and looks at what's in front of them. Which, by Eddie's estimation, is some sort of farm place. Pumpkin patch. Closed, which makes sense given the hour. There's a big grassy stretch between them and the fence that surrounds the place. Richie walks a few feet off the sidewalk into it before suddenly sitting down. 

"Rich," Eddie starts, feeling a little hesitant. "You okay?"

"No, but that's par for the course right now."

Eddie walks into the grass and sits down next to Richie, who looks up at the darkening sky and says, "Just thinking about Stan."

Maybe Richie hadn't been writing jokes after all like Eddie thought. "What - what about Stan?"

"Just that I wish I'd gotten to know him as an adult." 

Richie reaches his hand out, just slightly, and Eddie feels his heart flutter as he reaches back, lets Richie wind their fingers together. Their shoulders press together close enough that he feels the breath Richie takes. "Now that all the terrifying shit is over, I'm mad, you know?" Richie says, as he pushes the heels of his sneakers into the grass.

Eddie is having a hard time concentrating on words while Richie's rubbing little circles with his thumb over the back of Eddie's hand, and doesn't even seem to notice he's doing it. "Mad. Well, fuck," he replies, as his brain catches up, and he thinks about all the things they'd forgotten. The _good_ things, not the clown. "We should be fucking mad."

"I didn't really have that many friends after you guys. A couple dudes I hung out with in high school - mostly we just smoked weed and watched shit on PBS. Then I went to the community college for a year, where I mostly smoked more weed and failed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life." 

Eddie thinks about how he went from college, to an internship, to his own cubicle at Allstate without even knowing what marijuana smelled like. 

"Are you mentally preparing statistics about the dangers of smoking pot, or…" Richie says, looking over with his nose all crinkled up.

"Can't say I ever dealt with those stats."

Richie laughs at that. Then he lies back on the grass, still holding Eddie's hand. After a second, Eddie follows suit. Stars are just starting to appear in the darkening sky. "Stan would tell us we're going to get bugs in our hair," Richie mutters.

"Yeah." Eddie tightens his fingers briefly around Richie's. "He probably would."

*

Back at the hotel, Eddie feels exhausted, like they'd walked ten miles instead of maybe one, if he rounds significantly upwards. Richie also seems like he's tired; he kicks his shoes off and falls face-down on the bed, leaving half empty. "Too much pizza?" Eddie asks, taking off his own shoes before setting his suitcase on the lone rickety chair so he can find his pajamas.

"No such thing," Richie mumbles into the pillow.

"Too much beer?"

"Again, no such thing."

Eddie chuckles and takes his stuff into the tiny square bathroom. There's a shower, but it doesn't even look big enough for him, much less Richie. He still has two days before he gets the stitches out, though, so he settles for taping a ripped and folded-up store bag over the wound before standing in the ceramic square and scrubbing down as carefully as possible. If they're going to sleep in the same bed he should at least try not to stink. 

It feels amazing to finally wash his hair, even if he has to do it one-handed because he's afraid of lifting his left arm up high enough to reach. It does take a while, and he's in the little bathroom long enough that Richie knocks on the door as he's toweling off. "You alive in there?" 

"Yeah, it just took for-fucking-ever to wash my hair."

"Good, because I have to piss."

"Oh, sorry." Eddie wraps the towel around his waist, then opens the door. He sees Richie avert his gaze immediately, looking over Eddie's shoulder at the doorjamb. An odd shiver runs through him; does he want Richie to look, or not look? Is that a question Eddie even wants to ask? He shivers again.

"Uh, yeah, okay," Richie mutters, shuffling his feet for a second. Then he ducks around Eddie into the bathroom and closes the door. After a second, Eddie hears water running.

Eddie sits down on the bed. He peels the medical tape carefully from his skin, and tosses the plastic bag in the trash. It seems to have worked well enough; the stitches don't look wet. He dabs on some ointment before getting into his pajamas. Then he stretches out carefully on one side of the bed - the side Richie hadn't faceplanted on earlier; that felt like claiming - and turns on the television to check if they really do get free HBO. 

Richie comes out of the bathroom in his pajamas, with wet hair. His glasses are off. Not for the first time, Eddie thinks about how different he looks without them. Richie gestures formlessly in his direction. "How's the, uh, war wound?"

"Survived the shower."

"Cool." 

One of the _Mission Impossible_ movies is on. They watch without talking for a while. Then Richie scrunches down further into the bed, sticking his long legs under the covers. After a second, Eddie puts his legs under the covers as well, so Richie will stop accidentally jostling him. 

"How come you always yank the sheet up so high around your head when you sleep?" Eddie asks. Blurts out the question, almost.

A frown crosses Richie's face, but doesn't linger. He sighs. "You know how we didn't really remember anything after we left, as kids," he says. It's not really a question. "I had weird dreams, though. I don't know if I'd call them nightmares, but maybe they were - I didn't remember too much of them when I woke up, but they did wake me up, and I guess I always felt better afterward when I'd get all down under the blankets and pull them around me real tight. Then it just got to be a habit."

Eddie nods. "I can understand that, dude." 

"You didn't have weird dreams after?"

"Not that I remember," Eddie answers, trying to think back. On the television screen, Tom Cruise is running. Things explode behind him. "I think I had this one recurring dream about being in a car with no driver, as it went down a really long deserted road, like out in the country or something. But I was never really scared of it. Confused, maybe. I just remember I had it a lot."

"Probably something you should talk to your therapist about."

Eddie flips him off, then turns off the lamp on the side table. "I need to sleep, dude, but if you want to keep watching TV, I don't mind."

"No, I'm tired, too." Richie slides further down into the bed and turns on his side, facing away from Eddie. The bed is big enough that there's a gap between them, wide enough to fit a pillow, and Eddie's still not close enough to the edge that he's worried about falling out. It'll be fine. He's pretty sure Richie doesn't kick in his sleep.

He powers off the television and leaves the remote on the table next to his phone, which is dead. He should have plugged it in. He can plug it in tomorrow, in the car. 

"I'm glad you don't snore, Rich," he says into the darkness.

"Uh, me too." There's a sort of pause; he hears Richie breathing gently, feels him shift slightly on the mattress. "Eds. If I wake you up screaming, I'm sorry in advance."

"No, dude. Don't be sorry. I mean, I could really say the same." He reaches out and pats Richie's arm briefly, awkwardly. "I guess if we both wake up in the middle of the night there's still some bourbon left, right?"

"Got half a bottle still." 

"Night, Rich."

"Night, Eds."

*

Neither of them wake up screaming in terror, and in the morning, Eddie feels a little more well-rested than he has previous nights. When he checks the stitches, he finds the bruising on his torso has started to fade out. What was dark and purple before has lightened, mottled yellow and blue-lavender, and when he presses a fingertip - gently - to the part that hurt the worst just a few days ago, the pain is just an echo. The wound itself looks completely healed over. It's an angry red line, but it's healed.

"I'm so glad I can get these fucking stitches out tomorrow, dude," he says to Richie as they stand next to the Mustang in the McDonald's parking lot. Richie's eating an Egg McMuffin. Eddie's debating if he wants to put the little packet of granola on top of his parfait. 

Richie rubs a napkin over his mouth before answering. "I bet they itch."

"Hell yeah. What's on the map for today?"

"We got like seven hours between here and Omaha. Not sure there's all that much on the way. Des Moines, maybe. I did a show there last year and we ate at - my manager and I, I mean - at this really good Italian place." He pauses, squishing the napkin a little more between his fingers. "Or maybe I just drank enough wine that anything would have been good. Huh. Well, either way, that's all I've got for Des Moines."

Eddie grins around his spoon. "That's more than I've got."

*

The gods of traffic must be smiling upon them, because Eddie can't see a semi-truck on this entire stretch of interstate, and they haven't gotten stuck in a pack of them for at least an hour. "I almost feel like I could put my head out the window and howl," he says to Richie.

"You should."

"Mmm, no." 

Richie drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "Did I tell you about the time I got wasted after a show in… fuck, where was I? Detroit, I think. And we were going to Chicago for a couple days after that, so it was close enough that we weren't saying overnight in Detroit, just hitting the road instead."

"Are you going to tell me you puked out the window of a moving car?" Eddie asks, vaguely horrified.

"No, but I did scream drunkenly out the window and bugs flew into my mouth."

"Ugh, gross, dude." 

Richie's grinning. "It was. But I was too drunk to care."

Eddie shudders, shaking his head. The movement changes his view out the window for a second, and he stops, then leans forward and looks upward out the top of the windshield at the sky. "I don't suppose you looked at the weather," he says.

"I never do. I hate looking at the weather."

"It's gonna rain."

"We got wipers."

Eddie looks again at the very dark mass of clouds rolling in from behind them. He sees Richie glance at the rearview, to look at the sky. "Yeah, that's dark," he hears Richie mutter.

"Wait, why do you hate looking at the forecast?" he asks, his brain catching up with Richie's statement. "I never heard anyone say that before."

They slide past a semi in the slow lane. Then Richie says, "I guess I never thought about it. I don't read my horoscope, either."

"They're hardly the same thing, dude."

"You can't tell me the meteorology and astrology are _that_ far apart on the - the truthiness scale."

"That's not a thing," Eddie scoffs. A fat raindrop hits the windshield. "We should have looked at the weather."

The raindrop is quickly followed by another, then another, and within thirty seconds it's a complete downpour. Richie turns the wipers to their highest setting. "Okay, I'm even more glad we're not stuck in like, the wake of some semi," he mutters, squinting out into the grey haze. 

"Shit like this usually doesn't last long." 

It gets loud enough that the radio is drowned out. Eddie figures he'll let Richie concentrate on the blurry road and watches out the passenger window instead for a while, sorting out a to-do list in his mind. He does need to call Myra. Even if he's terrified of the conversation, he needs to stop being a baby about it. 

His thoughts slide after a few minutes, to the stillness of the motel room that morning when he'd woken up. The sun had been up for a while, judging from the strong line of it that bypassed the edges of the curtains where Richie hadn't drawn them close together enough, and crossed warm over the lumps of their knees in the bed. Eddie could hear Richie breathing softly, still asleep. And they were close enough that he could feel Richie's rising and falling chest moving the sheets, just that tiny amount. 

Objectively, the mattress was too soft, the sort of thing that would normally settle an ache in Eddie's hips. It was one of the reasons he usually hated hotel rooms, and now he'd been in nothing but for more than a week and this was the first he'd thought of it. He could get up, stretch out the pain. But he didn't want to move.

*

"Okay, I don't know about this one," Eddie says, one hand still on the car door.

"You don't think I can get like, at least five minutes' worth of jokes out of this?" Richie gestures broadly towards the nondescript building - so nondescript that Eddie thinks to himself that it's the exact same color as a peanut butter on wheat bread sandwich. A sign in front of it proclaims it to be the Hiller-Hintz museum. 

"I think we can get five minutes out of the whole thing, maximum."

Richie snorts a laugh at that. "We don't have anything else to do today."

That's true. "You know this is just going to be another one of those old white guys who pat themselves on the back for being the first Europeans to put up a fence and call it a town sort of places," he warns.

"I am always up for writing bits that mock early settlers." Richie twirls the car keys once around his finger, then sticks them in his pocket. "All right, onward."

There's no docent or anything at the door, just a sign above a wall-mounted box that says the museum is a self-guided tour that runs on donations. "You wanted to stop," he says pointedly to Richie, who digs in his other pocket and comes up with a crumpled five dollar bill. He stuffs it into the box.

At first glance, the museum is several plexiglass-enclosed exhibits and a taxidermied bear. "Oh yeah," Eddie hears Richie mutter under his breath. "Is the bear the punchline?"

"You don't need to whisper, I don't think there's anyone else in here."

"If Hiller or Hintz really killed this bear, it would need some better preservation than just standing here," Richie says. 

Eddie rolls his eyes and looks at the first exhibit. It's maps. "I must have missed the day at school where we learned what was important about someone's hand-drawn homestead sketch."

Richie stops midway through leaning towards the plexiglass to look. His brows draw together, then he looks at Eddie with an almost comically confused expression. "Okay, remember how we forgot about Derry and each other and the fucking clown -"

"Yes," Eddie interrupts.

"But like, I didn't forget how to add and subtract and shit. Or read. Or tie my shoelaces."

"I would feel sorry for your mom if you'd suddenly forgotten how to shit the second you drove out of Derry," Eddie manages to say with a completely straight face. It's worth it even though Richie punches him in the arm, and not lightly. "Ow."

"Shut up."

*

"You know what I did forget," Richie says, in the dark stillness of the hotel room in Omaha. Their motel room faces the road, and the ceiling illuminates every so often as a car goes by. This one has two beds, so they didn't have to share. Eddie sort of misses it, even though it was only once.

He turns carefully onto his side and looks over at Richie, who's just a shape in the bed closest to the window. Eddie can make out his profile, so he's looking up at the ceiling. " What?"

"You, Eds."

"Well - didn't we all kind of - forget each other?"

"I forgot you were the first person I ever fell in love with."

"Oh," Eddie breathes, as the weight of it rolls right into his chest, making him feel like he's been pressed down onto the mattress. "Oh."

"Sorry."

"No, don't be sorry, Rich." Then he swallows hard and adds, "We're all fucked up, dude."

"This wasn't - this isn't - it's the least fucked up part of my life, man."

Eddie feels like his heart's pounding triple-time, which can't be good. "Really?"

"We were kids. I felt like it was super fucking complicated, back then. But now -" Eddie hears him take an audible breath. "Now it just feels like it was the easiest thing I ever felt. The purest. Not all fucked up by adult shit. You were my best friend and I loved you and that was it."

"Shit, Richie." Eddie presses a hand over his eyes. He feels dangerously close to crying, heat rising in his throat. _How can Richie just say that stuff, like it's easy?_

"You don't have to say nothin'. It's fine. I just felt like I should tell you I remembered."

Eddie swallows against the pressure in his chest. He can't say anything for a while, so he listens to Richie breathe, as he figures Richie is probably listening to him breathe. When the tight feeling eases, and his heart stops feeling like it's trying to climb directly up into his throat, he whispers hoarsely, "That's a - that's a hell of a thing to remember."

"I know." Richie turns over, facing away from him and pulling the sheet up to his ears, just his hair sticking out the same way as every night on the road so far. "We should get some sleep. At least I didn't have to hit the bottle."

"Yeah."

"Night, Eds."

"Night, Rich."

It takes forever for Eddie to fall asleep after that, listening to Richie breathe in the other bed - listening for any change at all in Richie's breath, or for it to speed up into a nightmare, or for it to stop altogether. His own pulse starts to slow, and the rushing in his ears fades out. Eventually, he drifts off, still trying to listen to Richie falling asleep in the other bed.

*

They're the first people in line at the walk-in clinic. Eddie hands his discharge paperwork from Derry to the check-in nurse. She looks it over and says everything appears in order, and asks him to have a seat.

"You want me to come with?" Richie asks, when Eddie's name is called a few minutes later. 

"Sure."

"How'd you get this?" the attending nurse asks, once Eddie's taken off his shirt and the bandage has been been peeled away. She's older than the two of them, in scrubs and a chunky bracelet made of shells that makes soft clinking sounds as she shoves it up her arm to readjust her gloves.

"I was mugged," Eddie replies, straightfaced. 

"Orders give your home address as New York City," the nurse says, her eyes on the cut. "It happen there? You're quite a ways from home."

Richie says dryly, "He wasn't about to let some clown slicing him up get in the way of our reunion road trip," and it's all Eddie can do not to laugh. 

"A road trip, very nice." She wheels the little tray of instruments and bandages over next to them. "Should only take a few minutes and then we'll get it cleaned up, and you'll be on your way. All right, lift your arm up - good, right there is good." 

Richie shuffles a little closer on the other side, just enough for his arm to press lightly against Eddie's. The stitches coming out only stings a little - it's the cold of the scissors and the tweezers that's more uncomfortable. Eddie turns his good hand and slides his fingers loosely between Richie's, watching his face. Richie's eyes widen slightly behind his glasses, but then he squeezes Eddie's hand lightly. 

Eddie's aware of the absurdity of this situation, keeping one arm in the air while the nurse removes the stitches, holding Richie's hand in the sterile room. 

"Looks good, let's just put some antibacterial on it for now, and a bandage," the nurse says. Eddie twitches a little at the cold gel, but then it's over, and she's wheeling her little stool backwards to dump the medical waste into a marked container. "Wear the bandage until you shower, but after that, you're good to go."

"Thanks."

Richie lets go of his hand and Eddie stands up, putting his jacket on again. In the parking lot he asks, "Are you going to let me drive now?", and Richie makes a face but tosses him the keys. 

Neither of them say much for a while. Eddie keeps an eye on the GPS on Richie's phone, mounted on the dash again. Traffic is light, and the Mustang is nice to drive, even if it is a little lower than Eddie prefers his cars. When he starts to feel hungry, not to mention wishing desperately for a cup of something caffeinated, he takes the next exit off the highway. There's a restaurant at the truck stop. He pulls in there. 

It's the sort of place where the waitress doesn't even ask before she pours them each coffee after she hands out menus. "Uh, thank you," Richie says. "Looks really strong."

"We don't make it any other way," she replies. "I'll come back in a few minutes for your order."

Eddie feels hungrier than he has in days. The menu is, of course, full of things he needs to avoid. He can see Richie glancing at him over the top of his own menu. "What, dude."

"Can you eat any of this?" Richie asks, then bursts out laughing like it's funny.

"Fuck you," Eddie whispers back. "I could go into anaphylactic shock if I eat the wrong thing. You won't think it's funny when I'm collapsing."

"I might," Richie deadpans, but then Eddie feels Richie's foot touch his under the table, just briefly. "All right, so - hashbrowns? Fruit? Ham?"

"Yes."

"Uh… no pancakes, right. Toast? Those funky little turkey sausage patties?"

Eddie puts down his menu cautiously and says, "I guess you've learned. I'm going to hit the head, you can order for me."

When he gets back from the washroom, the menus are gone and Richie looks satisfied. Their coffee mugs have also been refilled, and are steaming. Eddie stares down at his for a moment. "You know, I barely drink this at home." 

"How do you survive, man?" Richie adds one of the little creamers to his. "Like, really, how does one get to be a middle-aged mostly able-bodied American man and not drink coffee?"

"We drink tea," Eddie replies. 

Richie looks at him but doesn't say anything. 

"I should probably call my wife," Eddie says quietly, looking at the icon on his phone that announces he has waiting voicemails. Myra's called twice in the last two days. He wondered if she called the Derry Inn, looking for him, only to be told they'd all checked out of the hotel. He feels like there's a high probability she had. 

"And say what?" Richie asks, and for once his voice is serious and soft, no trace of sarcasm.

_That I've run off with my best friend_ , Eddie thinks, almost hysterically. Like some completely overdone cliche in a romance novel. He feels a flush roll through his entire body. It's not unlike the feeling he gets when he's ingested an allergen, except for how it's completely different. He feels the heat come up into his cheeks. 

"Look," Richie says softly, when Eddie doesn't answer. "I don't really have much of a life to go back to. My career, sure, fine-" he waves a dismissive hand, "I can always book shows. I live in hotel rooms most of the time; I don't even own my own car. I don't even have a goldfish. So ditching the shambles of my life to drive around the country with you is kind of a no-brainer for me. But it's not the same for you. And if you want to go home, I'll drive you to the airport."

"No," Eddie says immediately, effectively managing his stress for a moment. "That wasn't what I was going to say."

The waitress reappears then, pouring more coffee in Richie's cup. "Breakfasts should be up shortly," she says.

Richie adds another creamer, then knocks a spoon around the cup for a moment. "What were you going to say?"

"I don't want to go home," Eddie says. The words feel strange in his mouth. He feels the flush rise again. "I can't - I can't go back to any of that. I can't go back to sitting in an office running numbers all day, letting Myra steamroll over me all night - shut the fuck up, Richie."

Richie is visibly swallowing his laughter. "You did leave yourself wide open for that one."

"Yeah."

"So - what? You want to come hang out on the West Coast for a while?"

Their breakfasts arrive then, before Eddie can answer. He cuts the slice of cantaloupe off the rind and into bite-sized pieces, then looks at Richie. "Would I be invited if I did?"

"Sure. As long as you don't mind the inch of dust over every surface. Probably some mold in the fridge."

"Too bad I lit my inhaler on fire." Eddie sticks a cube of melon in his mouth and watches Richie struggle not to laugh at that.

*

They stop again a couple hours later when Eddie feels like walking for a while and also relieving himself of all the coffee he had. There's an antique mall and a taqueria next to one another, so they wander the musty-smelling booths, picking up beer steins with molded deer heads on the tops, old tennis rackets, and JFK biographies that Richie frowns at. "None of these things are actually antiques," he whispers loudly in Eddie's ear.

"I know that, dude, but this Luke Skywalker action figure is pretty cool. And vintage." Eddie waves it in Richie's face, then sets it back on the shelf. "Did you ever wonder if Luke Skywalker was gay?"

Richie nudges his glasses back up into place. "Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes." He sticks his hands in his jacket pockets. "I think all queer kids wonder about that."

"Oh." Eddie picks up the action figure once more and looks at it. The little plastic face looks back at him, unmoving, with the molded plastic blond hair. "In that case, I think I'll get it for you."

"...sure," Richie says quietly.

Eddie steps in next to him, so close their arms are touching, and murmurs, "That can't be the first time you've said it out loud."

"No, dude, but it's - not exactly something I shout from the rooftops, you know?" 

Eddie has absolutely no experience in this particular arena; he married the first woman he slept with, and before a few days ago, he never spent much time thinking about dudes in a _this floats my boat_ way - other than how he and Myra watched _Three Days of the Condor_ once and agreed that 1975 Robert Redford could get it. Eddie still stands by that opinion. "Is it because you think it'll mess with your career?"

"Yes. No. I don't know, I just…" He trails off, looking at the little Skywalker figure in Eddie's hand. "It's not anybody's business but mine. Does that make sense?"

Eddie figures Richie operates at least peripherally in an industry where people's divorces and affairs and plastic surgery sells magazines and greases the wheels of TMZ, so. "Yeah, it makes sense, dude."

"All right. I need a margarita now."

"Fair enough. Let me pay for this first, though."

He buys the figurine and sticks it in Richie's breast pocket, little plastic arms on the outside so it looks like it's riding along. "Gee, thanks," Richie says dryly, but he doesn't take it out again, and plastic Luke accompanies them next door. 

They sit at the bar, and Richie has a margarita and Eddie a Sprite. "See, it's good you can drive again," Richie says. He pushes salt from the rim of the glass up, over, and into the liquid. "Now I can be drunk from here to wherever it is we're going."

"Today, Wyoming."

"Trashmouth Tozier's alcohol tour of the West!" 

Eddie rolls his eyes and drinks his Sprite. Richie eats tortilla chips from the basket set out on the bar and finishes his drink in about four swallows, but doesn't order another. They're not the only people in the place despite it being a little earlier than what any reasonable person would term lunch, but the bartender keeps glancing over. He's probably recognized Richie. 

He leans over slightly. "I think we should go before the bartender posts about you on Twitter."

"What? Oh. Fuck that." Richie eats another chip, defiantly, then raises his hands in the air. "Yeah, okay."

*

The drink must have been strong, because Richie falls asleep five minutes into the next stretch of road. He snores a little, his head leaning against the window, but it's soft. Eddie adjusts the volume of the radio so that it's not blaring but he can still hear it, and follows the directions on Richie's phone that will lead them to North Platte, which Richie has programmed in as the halfway point. It's more than an hour from where they are now.

He hasn't grown tired of Richie's constant company yet, but it's nice being in that zone of following the interstate, singing along with the radio mostly under his breath. And it's interesting to see Richie's face as he sleeps, something Eddie hasn't experienced before now since Richie always faces away from him in their motel rooms. All his facial muscles seem to relax, and he looks the softest that Eddie's seen. For once he doesn't look like he's cataloguing every second to turn it into a possible joke some day down the road. 

Not for the first time, Eddie wonders if Richie's career is really the best for him. He'd never say it, not to Richie's face, but the thought has run back and forth across his consciousness since about twenty miles outside Derry. Maybe he'd say it if Richie asked him outright, but. 

His stomach starts to growl as they approach North Platte, and Eddie glances at the clock and is surprised to see it's almost two in the afternoon, and that he's been driving for nearly three hours. There's a grumbling noise from the passenger seat, and he looks over to see Richie blinking at him, looking distinctly surly. "Did I totally fucking pass out?"

"You did, dude."

"What the hell." Richie takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "Okay, no more tequila."

Eddie laughs. "Maybe just no more tequila before noon." 

"Where the fuck are we?"

"Almost to this nowhere place you plugged in for us to stop." The directions are indicating the exit is approaching, so Eddie changes lanes. "I need something to eat before my stomach eats itself."

Richie makes a weird face, then frowns. "Yeah, me too."

"Use my phone and look up some place for us to get lunch." 

He plucks Eddie's phone from the cupholder, and Eddie takes the next exit to North Platte. "You know your wife has called three times today," Richie says quietly. 

Anxiety swoops low in Eddie's stomach. "I know."

"Are you - are you ever going to answer?"

"I know I should." Eddie rubs his hand over his mouth. "Like it's totally not fair of me, not to answer. She's probably freaking out. But whenever I think about answering, _I_ freak out."

There's a long pause, and Eddie glances over to see Richie staring straight ahead out the windshield. Richie says, "You know, you keep saying you don't know if you can go home after all that shit that happened, but I guess I didn't think you really meant it. Like you just needed time. To - to process, or whatever."

They're on a city highway now. There's a Qdoba up ahead; Eddie pulls into the lot and puts the car in park. His palms are sweating and he rubs them on the thighs of his jeans. "I have four more days of PTO I'm burning, and then I'm quitting my job. Last night I drafted an email to a lawyer friend of mine, so that I can file for divorce. I haven't fucking sent it yet, because I'm petrified, but. I don't want to go back to the life I had. I want - I want to just keep doing this with you."

"Eddie, you…" Richie trails off, and doesn't finish whatever it is. Eddie wipes his sweaty palms off once more, then turns the car off and gets out. He marches towards the Qdoba not waiting to see if Richie is following. 

He stops cold before he gets to the door and turns around. "Is forty too old to realize you want to have sex with a dude?"

Richie also stops, blinking behind his glasses. "Uh, is the dude - is it me?"

"Yes," Eddie says, before he can convince himself to keep his mouth shut.

"Oh," Richie breathes, which isn't what Eddie was expecting. He's not sure what he was expecting. More words, at least. His palms feel clammy. Richie stares at him a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then he says, "I - I need a burrito, come on."

"Burrito - yeah, okay."

Richie holds the door for him, then sets his hand gently on the small of Eddie's back, just for a second. Eddie feels himself flush. "Rich -"

"After we eat lunch, okay? Give me at least twenty minutes to reboot my brain." He stops at the back of the waiting line of customers and rubs his hands up under his glasses. "I can't believe you said that in the parking lot of a _Qdoba_ , of all places."

The absurdity of it runs into Eddie all at once and he starts laughing despite his nerves. "I surprised myself," he admits.

"Now I have to think about what I want on a burrito and not about _that_ ," Richie mutters. "Did you have to put it like that exactly? Christ." 

They're up next in line. Eddie focuses enough to order his bowl, pay, get his drink, and sit down at one of the tables with Richie. They eat in silence, minutes the pop music over the store speakers, until Richie tosses the all-tortilla bottom end of his burrito down into the basket and says quietly, "I don't - I don't want to be just your trial run, Eds. That guy you sleep with just so you know. I don't think I could live with it if we did something and then you said fuck it, this shit isn't for me, and went back to New York."

"I don't want that, either."

"You can say that, but that doesn't mean…" Richie trails off, shredding a napkin between his fingers. It strikes Eddie how incongruous this is: talking about sex without really talking about it in a fast-food restaurant with what he thinks is Carly Rae Jepson singing in the background. "Oh, fuck it. You didn't say it because of what I told you last night, right?"

"I've been thinking about it since you gave me your shirt in the hospital." Mostly about holding Richie's hand, or if he'd let Eddie sit next to him on the bed and rest his head on Richie's shoulder, or what sort of kisser Richie might be. Where he might put his hands if they kissed.

"You were drugged."

"Not that drugged." Eddie drops his spork into the cardboard bowl. "Okay, I didn't think it through exactly, bringing it up in a parking lot, but where else are you supposed to bring shit up on a road trip?"

Richie's mouth twitches. "Okay, good point."

"I'll call Myra today," he promises, even as the idea sends a wave of terror rolling through him. 

"Good, because while I might be a douchebag, I don't want to be the dude who does stuff with someone while their spouse waits at home." 

That's fair. "I don't want you to be that dude, either," Eddie agrees. The scared feeling starts to recede. He should have made phone calls right away, when they stopped the first night. Or maybe the second night, once he wasn't so drugged up. 

"I'm sorry," he says to Richie. "I shouldn't have just sprung that on you. And I shouldn't have assumed that just because you said what you said last night that you still -"

"I do," Richie interrupts. His face reddens. "I do."

"Okay. Great."

"Great." Richie takes a long pull on his soda. Eddie looks down into his mostly-empty bowl. "Uh, hit the head before we hit the road?"

"Good plan," Eddie says, breathless for no reason.

*

An hour of top-twenty car radio later, Richie clears his throat and says, "There's a place up here that the internet says has really good ice cream, should we stop?"

"I need to pee anyway, so yeah. The next exit?" Eddie glances over quickly to see Richie squinting at his phone screen in the afternoon sun. 

"Yeah, next exit, and then it looks like it shouldn't be too far from that. Yeah, this one - now a right here, then a left at those lights up ahead, I think."

There's a small parking lot. Eddie turns the car off, then swallows against the tight, cold feeling in his chest. It's just panic; he's not having a heart attack. To Richie he says, "You go in first. I'm going to call Myra."

"RIght now? Are you sure?"

Eddie nods. 

"Sure, man. I'll just - be inside." Richie squeezes his forearm quickly, then gets out of the car.

Eddie looks at the cars driving past for a minute, thinking about how to say what he needs to say, then calls. Myra answers with something that's nearly a wail. "Oh, Eddie, where are you?"

"I, um - Wyoming." The heart attack feeling radiates down his arms and he takes a deep breath, tries to shake it off. "Let me just talk for a minute, please. I'm sorry I didn't call you before now. There was some stuff in Derry I had to deal with that didn't go so great. And uh, one of the guys I was friends with as a kid, he was there too and we decided to… go for a drive."

"To Wyoming," Myra says, flatter than he expects, with a long pause between the words.

"That's just where we are now, but - I'm sorry. I am. I don't know how to say this." Eddie can feel the sweat gathering under his arms. Myra doesn't prompt him, doesn't say anything. Which, if this were happening to him, he probably wouldn't either. 

He says, "I'd like a divorce."

_It's not you, it's me_ , bounces inside his head, echoing. "I'll pay for it all, and the lawyers and everything -"

_It's not you, it's me_. He doesn't add it. 

"Oh, Eddie, I should have known you'd have some sort of mid-life crisis," Myra interrupts. Her voice is wavering. Eddie looks out the windshield again, not really seeing the traffic that passes as she keeps talking. "You'd _like_ a divorce? I don't - I don't even know what else to say to you."

The beep of the call disconnecting makes him jump. He stares down at the phone for a minute. Then he leaves it in the cupholder and gets out of the car. The air here is cool, and he leans against the Mustang for a few breaths, willing his heart to stop beating so fast. It takes longer than he wants it to. 

Inside the shop, Richie is sitting at one of the tables, a bottle of water in front of him. "You okay?" he asks, voice cautious.

"I guess." Eddie shrugs. He realizes Richie doesn't have any ice cream. "You didn't need to wait to order."

"I felt like I should."

"Okay. Yeah, let's uh - ice cream." He thinks he can eat. Maybe there's peppermint, that sounds soothing. 

Richie gets a sundae that has what Eddie considers to be excessive amounts of chocolate, and Eddie gets two scoops of something that's labeled "After Dinner Mint". It proves to be sweet and softly minty, and he stares down at it in the cup for a while, with a bite melting off the spoon in his mouth.

"So you still want to go to California?" Richie asks, long past the point where their silence has turned slightly uncomfortable. He jabs his spoon into the chocolate monstrosity. "I won't be upset if you don't, Eds, I get -"

"I do. Still want to go to California." 

"Really?"

Eddie takes another bite. "Really."

"I admit, was a little worried you'd come in here and say you wanted to go to the airport."

Eddie shakes his head. 

"Cool." 

"Unless… you don't want to go to California," Eddie says slowly, spoon paused stuck in the ice cream.

"Well, I do live there," Richie replies. Then he grins, sort of lopsidedly. "Dude. Are we really having this conversation?"

Eddie's lost now. "Are we having what conversation?"

"You just left your wife for me," Richie says. Eddie groans and shoves his bowl out of the way so he can rest his forehead on the table, which is a bad idea because it's sticky and there are probably germs, but in this moment he doesn't care. The panic-slash-heart-attack feeling swells in his chest again and he breathes hard against it. 

After a second, he feels Richie's fingers touch his hair gently. It helps.

*

"I'm okay," Eddie says, an hour later in the car. Richie's driving, humming along to a station that seems to play nothing but the Beatles. "Honestly, I'm okay."

"Good. Just figured I'd let you, you know, think about stuff."

"It's been a day, for sure," Eddie admits.

Richie huffs a laugh at that, and reaches over to pat Eddie's knee. Eddie grabs his hand and holds it there. After a second, he feels the tension in Richie's arm relax. "Yeah?" Richie asks quietly.

"Yes."

*

The motel in Cheyenne is way nicer than the place with the tiny cubicle shower, and has a little mini-fridge as well as a flat-screen television. "Hell, in that case, I'm going to walk down to the convenience store we passed a block back and get some beer," Richie says, when he sees the fridge. "Do you drink beer?"

"The gluten-free kind."

"Hmm. I'll find you something." He grabs his wallet again and goes out the door. 

Eddie takes his toiletries bag into the bathroom and looks around. The shower is definitely nice. All the fixtures are shining chrome, probably new. He remembers working on insurance policies for a couple city hotels; all the sort that had old plumbing that tended to give out all the time. Then he remembers sending his resignation letter from the car an hour ago, and feels the cold sweat come up on the back of his neck. 

_You're fine_ , he tells himself. _You have impeccable work history. You can find another job, no problem._

He still has to press his face into his hands and take a few deep breaths. Then he gets undressed, peels off the bandage from that morning - _was it only this morning?_ \- and looks at the scar. The dots from the stitches have all scabbed over. Not for the first time, Eddie thinks it looks pretty badass, and thus completely out of place on his body.

It's much quicker and easier to shower when he doesn't have to worry about the stitches, and he's going through his suitcases looking for a clean t-shirt to wear to bed when Richie comes back. He's got one six-pack under his arm and another in his hand. "They had something that said gluten-free, so I grabbed it for you," he says, nudging the door shut behind him with his foot. Then he glances up and Eddie sees him register his state of undress. "Um, how's the side?"

"Looks all right." Eddie frames it with his hands. "Now that I'm no longer actively dying from it, it's sort of cool."

Richie grins. He puts the beer down on the dresser. "Doesn't look as bruised as the other day."

"The tenderness is all gone, thankfully," Eddie says. He realizes Richie's getting closer, one hand out. 

"Can I?" Richie asks.

Eddie's not sure why Richie would want to touch, but. "Sure," he breathes, shivering.

Richie's touch is incredibly light, just skimming. Eddie feels like he's not breathing at all as Richie walks fingertips gently up his ribcage, up the whole distance of the scar. Then he feels alternately hot and cold. 

"Does it hurt?" Richie asks, when Eddie's shiver is obvious.

"No, it's just a little sensitive where the stitches were." 

Richie's touch turns almost caressing for a split second, his palm warm and cupping Eddie's waist briefly before he starts to pull back. Eddie catches his wrist. "Wait -"

"What?"

"Kiss me."

"Really?" Richie asks, then coughs. "Yeah, if you want to -"

Eddie yanks him forward and presses his mouth to Richie's. It's awkward; a weird angle, and he's still gripping Richie's arm tightly in nervousness. It's not a good kiss. Eddie can't remember the last time he did any sort of extensive kissing. He and Myra did the quick hello-goodbye, every day, but - he shouldn't think about Myra right now.

"You're only the third person I've ever kissed," he blurts out. 

"Congratulations to me," Richie replies. "I think we should try that again, if you want."

Eddie nods. He lets go of Richie's wrist this time, puts his hand instead on Richie's shoulder. Richie slides his hand up, up, and cups the back of Eddie's neck. Eddie shivers again. "Okay, we both need to relax," Richie whispers. "Breathe in, out, ready - whoo."

Eddie laughs - he can't stop it. That helps, actually. He registers Richie searching his face. "This is all right, right?" Richie asks. "The touching?"

"Yeah, dude." He kisses Richie quickly once, then again. Then Richie's hand comes up to his jaw, and guides Eddie in slower the next time, and doesn't let him move back. As they breathe into each others' mouths, he realizes Richie's fingertips are stroking gently behind his ear. 

Eddie feels dizzy. Richie moves his head slightly, brushing their lips together. Then he says, "I haven't kissed anyone in… months. More than that, maybe."

"Why not?" Eddie asks, before he can think about what he's saying.

"Wasn't really anyone I felt like screwing around with, I guess." He's still touching Eddie's face, and his thumb runs lightly along the curve of Eddie's ear. "Beer?"

"Yeah, let me put a shirt on."

"You don't have to get dressed on my account," Richie says. "I mean. If you're comfortable."

"It's warm enough in here, I guess." He steps back a little, and Richie goes to where he left the beer. 

From one pocket he pulls a bottle opener, and from the other two miniature alcohol bottles. "Potato vodka?"

"Warm?" Eddie wrinkles his nose, slightly horrified. "Is there an ice machine?"

"Oh. No. We'll save it for a place that has ice." He opens them each a bottle of beer, then stashes the rest on their sides in the little fridge. "Cheers."

"Cheers," Eddie echoes, then feels himself blush, standing there without a shirt. Then he yawns hugely as exhaustion hits him all at once. "Fuck. Today was a lot."

"Yep." Richie takes his shoes off, then his jeans. Then he sits down on one of the beds in just his boxers, beer bottle in hand. 

After a moment, Eddie stretches out beside him. "Is there HBO in this joint?"

*

He wakes up with Richie's arm over his waist, loose. There's still a gap between them but Richie's palm is spread warm just past the curve of his hip, fingers barely skimming the scar. Eddie would like to stay here without moving but he has to pee.

He's saved from having to choose between the two by Richie coming awake with a shout. Edie turns over to find Richie up on his elbows and staring straight forward. "Nightmare?" Eddie asks. 

Richie nods, taking a deep breath. Eddie scoots closer and puts an arm around him. "Derry?" he asks.

"Yeah." Richie relaxes after a second, sagging against Eddie. He scrubs a palm over his face. "Not even anything actually happening, just - that fucking terrorized feeling." 

Eddie gets that. He squeezes Richie's bony knee. They sit for a while without talking. Richie drew the blackout curtain tight the night before, so the room is still dim despite the hour, and there's hardly any noise from outside even though this motel is close to the highway.

"Breakfast?" Richie asks, rubbing a hand through his hair, which is sticking up in a dozen directions. Then he must see the clock, because he says, "Shit, nevermind, I guess it's closer to lunch. We slept late."

"Damn, I was tired," Eddie replies. He can still feel it lingering. Like an ache in his muscles. 

Richie grabs his glasses from the nightstand and puts them on. "I'm going to shower, if you want to stay in bed longer."

"Nah. But let me pee first." 

"Oh, right. I'll look up someplace to eat." He reaches over the side of the bed for his phone where it's plugged in on the floor. 

Neither of them move very quickly the rest of the morning. They barely make check-out time, then Richie drives straight down the road the motel is on to an IHOP. The restaurant is directly in front of a Wal-Mart. "I need deodorant," he says to Eddie. "And maybe some socks. Just to be safe."

"Socks, to be safe," Eddie echoes. 

"Yeah, dude."

The IHOP is nearly empty; they've hit the lull between breakfast and actual lunch. Eddie watches Richie drink an entire cup of coffee almost as fast as the waitress can pour it. "Not much sleep then, honey?" she asks, looking amused. 

"Hotel beds suck."

She nods and tops up his cup. "I'll be back in a few minutes to get your order."

Eddie cools his coffee with a couple creamers and takes a more leisurely drink. "So… Wal-Mart, then where to?"

"I think I've got a route." Richie spins his phone around so Eddie can see the screen. He traces a line without touching the glass. "I also think it's probably pretty boring, and since we're starting out late today, we'll hit Salt Lake City - uh, late-ish?" 

He waves his hand vaguely. "It's like six hours."

"At least I can drive now," Eddie says, grabbing the menu. "Although if I never eat another restaurant hash brown again it'll be too soon."

*

They wander around the Wal-Mart for longer than they probably should, given the hours they'll need to drive to make Salt Lake City tonight. "I mean, does it really matter?" Richie asks, plastic pack of socks in one hand. "There's plenty of motels along the interstate."

"True. But it's harder to tell which ones look cleaner in the dark."

"Eh," Richie replies with a shrug. 

"Rich," Eddie protests. 

"We thought that one motel was going to be like _Psycho_ come to life and then it was perfectly clean in the actual room." 

"I don't think cleanliness was the problem at the Bates Motel, dude."

*

Eddie grabs the keys directly out of Richie's hand, and ignores Richie's pointed smirk when he readjusts the driver's seat. "Let me guess," Richie says, laughter in his voice. "You drove something a lot higher off the ground before this."

"Hey, I learned to drive in one of those old boat station wagons." He backs out of the parking spot, and turning to look over his shoulder only pulls slightly at the scar. "In winter. In Rochester. I slid down a hill."

Richie at least looks somewhat sympathetic as he chuckles. "Why'd your mom pick Rochester?"

"Her sister was there. Aunt Diane. She worked at the post office, she helped my mom get a job." Eddie follows the directions back to the interstate, and merges on. It's flat, pavement baked in the heat, and the land on either side is also flat with the occasional scrub brush. 

"It was fine," he continues, even though Richie hasn't asked. "Diane's kids were around my age, and we mostly got along, so it was all right. Unremarkable." 

"I wonder if that was a thing, for all of us," Richie murmurs.

"If what was a thing?"

"The rest of our childhoods being thoroughly unremarkable. Bland. Boring."

Eddie never thought about it. "Maybe." 

Richie leans forward to take the little notebook from the farmstand restaurant out of the bag at his feet, then uncaps a pen clearly liberated from one of the motels. Eddie leaves him to it.

*

They stop in Green River for gas, then go into the small station for snacks. Eddie gets a bottle of water from the cooler, then finds Richie in the chip section, petting a sleek black cat that clearly belongs to the station.

"I kind of always wanted a cat," Richie says when he sees Eddie approach. He strokes the cat's head and it butts its face against his palm. "But I'm on the road so much that it would have to be boarded all the time, and that doesn't seem fair."

Eddie has never owned a pet in his life. He extends his hand and the cat sniffs his fingers. "I guess if we don't drive each other too crazy, we could get a cat," he offers. The cat turns its head and Eddie touches its ears, gently. "Surprisingly, I am not allergic. And one of us would almost always be there, right?"

Richie's staring at him with wide eyes. 

"What?"

"I feel like my brain just caught up with all this, dude," Richie says. The cat makes a grumpy noise, so he continues petting it. "Not in like, a bad way. Just in a - I've had roommates before but not anybody I was actually… not anyone I was doing a relationship thing with."

"That sounds lonely," Eddie says quietly. 

"I never thought about it." 

Eddie's not sure what to make of that. He runs his hand over the cat's back. It stands up on the shelf, stretching, then flicks its tail and jumps down to the tiled floor. Richie picks up the bag of Combos he put down to pet the cat. "You getting anything?"

Eddie holds up the bottle of water he's got. "And maybe some candy, if there's one of those kinds that you only ever find at gas stations. I always feel like there's some stuff I only ever see on road trips."

"Oh, like -" Richie makes a wild gesture. "Whatchamacallits."

"Yep. And those - these things." They're in the candy aisle now, and Eddie points to the paper-topped cellophane bags with various candies inside - gumdrops, spice drops, individually wrapped peppermints. The weird foam discs with crunchy sugar bits inside. The cat strolls through, winding around their feet for a moment as Eddie debates what he wants to get. He grabs the gumdrops. 

"Maybe I need a water, too," Richie says. He walks back towards the coolers with the cat following behind him, and Eddie sees him stop and crouch down to pet it again.

*

"I don't remember these being so gross when I was a kid," Richie says, crunching through one of the candy-filled UFOs as Eddie drives towards Salt Lake City. The highway is winding through a state park, the path seemingly cut out from - hills? Mountains? Eddie's not entirely sure at what point a hill becomes a mountain, or if there's some sort of geological option in between. Whatever it's called, the landscape is both pretty and slightly terrifying. Like, there's probably rockslides here, right?

He re-focuses from hills-or-mountains to Richie's words. "I think they were always gross, but we didn't care when we were kids," he replies. "That… you know that thing where you feel like you're getting away with something, eating foam."

"Remember when McDonald's sandwiches came in the foam containers?" 

They roll under the Salt Lake City ahead sign. "Please don't tell me you ate the foam container." 

"I didn't." Richie pauses, then adds, "I think Stan did, once. Took a bite of it after I dared him to, at that McDonald's on Fairview. I think it had a Filet-o-Fish in it."

"Stan the Man," Eddie murmurs. 

"We were… ten, maybe? His mom saw and made him spit it out." 

Eddie glances over and sees the soft, fond expression on Richie's face. "That's the sort of stuff I'm mad we forgot," Richie says. "You know? We went to that McD's with our moms every Saturday for lunch. I used to mix all those little salt and pepper packets into my ketchup. Thought I was cool, dipping my fries in basically a pool of salt."

"Not as gross as eating the Filet-o-Fish box." 

Richie offers the open bag of candy discs. Eddie shakes his head. "I'll pass." 

"You say that like those gumdrops aren't also gross. Hey, there's a zoo here."

"It's almost eight, I don't think the zoo is open." 

The mountains fade out and the highway widens, then merges into a different highway. Eddie follows the signs for Salt Lake City - versus Las Vegas - and the different highway merges back in to the one they were on. He takes the exit Richie's phone indicates. 

"A Ramada, nice," he says, pulling in.

"Should be a couple places to get takeout from." Richie unplugs his phone. 

Eddie parks and turns off the car. "I'm vetoing the Burger King," he says as he gets out.

*

"Have you ever done anything at all with a dude?" Richie asks, ceasing his vague forward movement with one hand resting lightly on Eddie's thigh.

Eddie looks at Richie's hand, then back up at his face. "By do anything - you mean -"

"Like fucking." Richie blinks, then frowns, like he can't believe he said that. His face reddens even more. "I, uh -"

Eddie feels flushed himself. "We say fuck all the time, dude."

"Not like -" 

Eddie leans forward and presses his mouth to Richie's, stopping whatever he's attempting to say, and feels Richie freeze at the touch. "What is it?" he whispers, not moving back at all. "We kissed last night, unless I was hallucinating or some shit. This _is_ what we were talking about, right?"

Warm - but sweaty - hands come up to cup Eddie's face and suddenly he's the one being kissed, like, actually kissed, instead of being the one to do the kissing. "Be - be careful of your side," Richie mumbles between kisses, also pausing to take his glasses off. "Don't let - don't let me press on it too hard or something."

"Shut the fuck up, man," Eddie replies, then jumps a little in surprise when Richie bites at his bottom lip. "Wait, what have you done, as far as fucking goes?"

"Not like, a _lot_. Not often, at least." 

Eddie presses a hand to Richie's chest, then curls his fingers, getting a fistful of his shirt. "Why not?"

Richie slumps slightly, deflated. "In the closet, remember?"

Eddie can't say that he understands, but he's willing to go along with it. And he does get that, for Richie, some of this is tied up in the terror Pennywise caused that summer. Maybe a lot of it is tied up in that terror. "Maybe we both need to go slow on this front," he says quietly. 

He presses a kiss to the corner of Richie's mouth and feels Richie's arms slide around his waist. "I'm still - I'm still okay with this," he adds. "I want to do what we're doing. I haven't, uh. Changed my mind. Or anything."

Richie's grip tightens slightly. "I guess we've both got some issues."

"To say the least," Eddie says dryly. He relaxes his grip on Richie's shirt, sliding his hand up to rub over his shoulder. "You know this is the craziest fucking thing I've ever done, right?"

"Even crazier than killing an alien serial murderer pretending to be a clown?"

"Okay, second craziest." Thinking about it that way does help the butterflies in his stomach to calm down a little. He leans in for another kiss, then ruins it yawning.

Richie laughs at him, but runs his fingers along the bottom edge of Eddie's polo, the sliver of skin there above the waist of his jeans. Then Eddie feels him freeze up. It only lasts a split second before Richie relaxes again. "We're so fucking messed up," he mumbles warmly against Eddie's neck. 

"Yeah, but it's okay."

*

"I've never been west of the Mississippi," Eddie says suddenly, as the Mustang zooms towards Reno. Even with the windows up and the air conditioning on, heat seems to radiate from everywhere, and the sky is a cloudless blue. Richie's driving, and for the first time, Eddie thinks he looks almost completely relaxed. Maybe there were edibles at the last gas station they stopped. Marijuana's legal in Nevada, right? Eddie's fairly sure.

Or maybe it's just the three thousand miles they've now got between them and Derry.

"Not to Vegas ever, really?" Richie's expression morphs into something surprised behind his glasses. "Thought it was one of those places everyone tries to go at least once, just to fuck around."

Eddie shakes his head. 

"Huh," Richie breathes. "Well, you can try some slots here if you want; it's not as fancy as Vegas but it's all right. I did some casino shows out here last year and the rooms they put me up in were pretty nice, and if you sit in one place to gamble for a while, the rail drinks are usually free for the price of tip."

"Then they're... not free," Eddie points out.

"It's close enough." Richie grins.

*

"Another real hotel room, two nights in a row," Eddie says, laughing, as Richie sticks the card in the slot and the door unlocks with a soft click. "And this one _not_ directly next to the highway."

"Shut up." 

They drop their bags on the floor. Eddie washes his face, feeling sweaty just going from the car to inside, and checks his side. It looks like it should. He looks in the mirror: it's a normal hotel bathroom mirror, lit by two fluorescent bulbs. It's bright and clean. No blood, no one hiding in the shower, nothing creepy in the slightest. Twelve floors down, the sound of the casino is an almost imperceptible buzz. 

"You good in there?" Richie calls through the door.

"I'm fine. Working on being less freaked out by hotel bathrooms." Eddie finishes washing his hands, then goes back into the main room. Richie's changing his shirt, into the one he'd bought yesterday at the Wal-Mart. It's got Marvin the Martian on it. Eddie grins. "You think kids these days know who Marvin the Martian even is?"

"Kids these days? Fuck no." Richie slides his glasses back onto his face. "Ready to hit the tables?"

"More like, I have twenty bucks I'm willing to donate to some slots, and that's it." 

"As long as someone brings me a screwdriver, I don't care what we play." He runs his hands through his hair, but it doesn't look any different. Eddie decides not to mention it. "You down for screwdrivers?"

"The orange juice part, maybe," Eddie replies, and Richie laughs. He reaches out, slides his hand down Eddie's arm until their fingers tangle. Richie squeezes. Then he doesn't let go, even as they go out the hotel room door into the clean and anonymous-looking hallway. 

Eddie's heart trips in his chest, but in a good way, not in panic. The sounds of the casino grow louder as the elevator carries them downwards. He leans against Richie a little in the small space. Richie, who still hasn't let go of Eddie's hand. 

_This isn't any less crazy than it was a week ago_ , the voice in his head reminds him. But it's not as loud as before, or as insistent, and the weight of Richie's hand in his nearly flattens it out. 

Tomorrow, California.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post for this fic here](https://alakeeffectgirl.tumblr.com/post/628788771184361472/something-better-it-movies-muschietti).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [to calculate their route](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392357) by [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare)




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